957: Development

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Development
Funding was quickly restored to the NHC and the APA was taken back off hurricane forecast duty.
Title text: Funding was quickly restored to the NHC and the APA was taken back off hurricane forecast duty.

Explanation

First some definitions, NHC is the National Hurricane Center and the APA is American Psychological Association.

The reference to Piaget Stage 5 in the comic is a reference to Piaget's Stages of Development in which stage 5 is where (to quote Wikipedia and Gruber, H.E.; Voneche, J.J.. eds. The essential Piaget.)

"Infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many things they can make happen to objects; they experiment with new behavior." This stage is associated primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals. Piaget describes the child at this juncture as the "young scientist," conducting pseudo-experiments to discover new methods of meeting challenges."

Which is exactly what the comic is describing in sustained interest in objects and their properties and the handy "?"s around the picture behind the newscaster in this comic.

So, with all that out of the way, this comic is a pun on the classification of hurricanes which are also classified in categories from 1 to 5. Piaget's Stages go from 1-6. The comic is making a joke that if the APA were on hurricane forecast duty instead of the NHC, that the hurricanes would be classified with Piaget's stages instead of categories.

Transcript

[News anchor at desk reporting.]
Cueball: Fear turned to confusion today as Hurricane Rina developed to Piaget stage 5, with sustained interests in objects and their properties.


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Discussion

Awwww, it's a baaaaby! A psychotic baby that's wrecking New Orleans! Davidy²²[talk] 08:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Eh, it's New Orleans. Wouldn't be the first time a giant baby wrecked the city, won't be the last. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 02:58, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Pun? I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

While the explanation *works*, starting with 'first some definitions' is a sure sign that it isn't written particularly *well*. It should probably be rewritten for more logical xkcdplaining. Hppavilion1 (talk) 06:28, 16 October 2016 (UTC)


Piaget has only 4 stages, though. This refers to the 5th substage of the first stage. 141.101.105.157 00:22, 22 April 2022 (UTC)